


Identity

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 07:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18048110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: As the crew of the Ebon Hawk heads to Coruscant after the victory at the Star Forge, two of them have a conversation about the big revelation.





	Identity

“He called you Revan.”

Dartak looked to the other man in the room. They were berthed on the Republic flagship, taking the cushy ride to Coruscant, the Republic intent on giving the heroes of the Battle of the Star Forge even more public accolades. The light of the hyperspace corridor that the ship was travelling through spilled into the room, dimmed by the viewport but still providing a soft light to the room.

“He?” Dartak had been half asleep when Carth had spoken up, so he was not entirely on the same wavelength as his lover. 

“Master Vandar. At the ceremony... He called you Revan.”

“He called me the ‘Prodigal Knight,’ too,” Dartak murmured, his distaste for the term dripping from the remark. 

Dartak’s disdain for being “the Prodigal Knight” made Carth chuckle slightly. It was one of the things that made falling in love with a Jedi as unorthodox as Dartak had proven himself to be feel right, after all the time he’d spent mourning his family. Still... There was that lingering thing on his mind. “Still. ‘Revan.’ Did he even ask if you wanted to tell everyone about that, or...”

That earned Carth a raised eyebrow and a teasing smirk. “I seem to recall you having no problems with pushing me to reveal my past to the crew immediately after Malak told us.”

Carth seemed rightly uncomfortable, though he did have a justification on hand. “That... could have been handled better, yes. But I had shock and anger as an excuse.” He paused. “Not that... you deserved the anger, you... You were as much a pawn as anything else. Which just goes back to what I was getting at... Revan.”

Despite his attempt at levity, Dartak had known that they wouldn’t be able to get around that serious topic. “Revan.” It was a bantha in the room, wasn’t it? Now that he had his face being flashed on the HoloNet alongside a captain of “Revan, the Prodigal Knight,” it wouldn’t be long before someone stopped and made a connection between the man who stopped Malak and the man who’d started the war with him.

“I would’ve used my name instead. ‘Dartak,’ I mean. Not Revan. At least in part because when people make the connection between the Revan who Vandar declared a Prodigal Knight and the Revan who led the Sith before Malak, I’m going to face a lot of people trying to come after me, pin the blame of the deaths of the people killed in the first part of this war, if not the whole thing.” He wasn’t looking forward to that inevitability. He anticipated making a hasty escape from Coruscant before too long, just to avoid being there when that bomb went off.

It was all too possible that the bomb would be an actual bomb.

“So, you don’t think of yourself as Revan at all, then?” Carth asked. 

Dartak almost had to ask him how he could think that, but then he paused. The destruction of Telos may have been led by Malak, but it had been the first act in Revan’s war against the Republic. Of course some part of Carth still wondered... Was he involved with the same man who bore responsibility for the death of his wife?

He met Carth’s gaze, reaching down to take his hand. “Revan died that day when Malak attacked him. I don’t know what made him do what he did. I don’t remember being him.”

“Do you wonder if those memories might ever return?”

“I’ve thought about it.” It had been a frequent thought throughout the trip away from Malak’s Leviathan. After learning who he’d been. He’d spent a long time, trying to figure out if he could remember anything about being Revan. Or if he’d wanted to. Sure, Revan had been a hero of the Mandalorian Wars, but Revan had also turned his forces back on the Republic he’d fought to defend.

The Republic was greatly flawed – really, any government was, especially one that governed at a galactic scale. So much could and would slip through the cracks. Dartak could understand wanting to cast down the old, patch the flaws, lift up those crushed underfoot. But to do so by waging war... Not because it needed to be done, but pretty much solely in the name of your own aggrandizement? He couldn’t understand that.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought, actually,” Dartak continued. “I don’t like the idea, to be honest. If I remember being Revan... I feel like I’d stop being me. So far as I care, Revan is dead, and he should stay that way.”

Carth let out a breath, one that had the feeling of containing a giant ball of tension with it. “Is it wrong that I’m glad to hear that? I... I fought for the Republic under Revan, I knew of him, as a hero, but... When I think of... of him now, I just see the Sith who fought the Republic. Who was... the enemy. And... I don’t see him when I look at you. Is that... I feel like that should be a problem. Because... you WERE Revan, even if you don’t remember it. Does that... It sounds strange, doesn’t it?”

“No more strange than the rest of this,” Dartak said with a sardonic chuckle. He sighed, reclining on the bed, not sure if he really could handle this kind of discussion right now, though, really, the conversation had long been bound to happen. “I don’t think of myself as Revan. I think of Revan as wholly divorced from who I am, individually. But... If I’m honest, I worry... I wonder...” Neither word quite felt right. “I’ve thought about what might happen if any of my memories ever return.” The brain was still one of the most mysterious parts of life, even with all the vast amounts of science and research available to the greatest minds of the Republic. “If I have flashes of memory of being Revan, is it possible that more will come? If more comes, will Revan’s personality return as well? Will I start to... turn back into Revan, and not even realize it?”

Suddenly, Dartak had a cold chill go down his spine. He could lose himself in Revan, and potentially not even realize what was happening to him.

And he had a separate realization. “The Jedi were using me as a weapon.” He scowled, suddenly seeing things such as Master Vrook’s open disdain for him in a new light. “I was a tool for them, not a person.” He felt a flash of anger, suddenly fully aware of just how much the Jedi valued “the Prodigal Knight,” as a title and symbol, and not as a person. “They didn’t care for me as anything other than the way to lead them to the Star Forge, end the war. If I’d died fighting Malak, they’d have given almost the same speech Vandar did.”

A part of him wanted to wring the diminutive Jedi Master’s neck, see what color someone turned when they started out green. Yet, despite recognizing the honesty of the emotion, Dartak knew that was not an urge he could indulge. Emotions were part of the condition of living, but being ruled by them... That was the real path to the dark side. 

So he tried to douse the burst of white hot anger at the realization that the Jedi had used him as something they’d just discard when done. What had been their plan from the beginning, he wondered? The Council would probably not have just quietly ‘disposed’ of him had he defeated Malak without learning who he’d once been. But it did raise the question, how had they expected to keep this from him?

Really... They couldn’t have.

“I was a short term solution,” he murmured softly, suddenly taken aback at the depths of the sheer... callousness as to who he was had been crafted by the Jedi Council.

Carth jolted, realizing that Dartak had just had a serious realization. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The Jedi... They weren’t thinking about me as an individual. Not even Revan. I was a tool for them, something that they’d use to find the Star Forge, stop Malak, and then... My usefulness for them was done. Would they have really cared if I’d been killed? What would they have done if there hadn’t been this big, public spectacle after the Star Forge was destroyed?”

For a long moment, Carth was silent, mulling that over, knowing there really was no good answer. “You know, if you were talking about this with Bastila, she’d probably offer something about how the Council are wise, that they did things as they did for a reason, that you should trust that they did the right thing.” He shook his head. “I’m not Bastila. I saw what Jedi ‘wisdom’ would have offered planets in the Outer Rim if we’d followed it. So... What it sounds like to me is that the Jedi were desperate and thinking no further than survival when they did... what they did to you. Which, I can understand. This war has been... hard on the Republic. To be honest, given how thinly stretched we’ve been these last few months, despite the celebrations, I’m not sure how much of a victory this was. So many lives lost, planets taken or ruined, people displaced... Not even getting to the inevitable in-fighting among the Sith when they learn about Malak’s death. There’s going to be a lot of clean up before we can really call this ‘over.’ This was... existential. I’m not forgiving the Jedi... but I do understand what was driving them when they did this.”

Rolling his eyes, Dartak nodded. “Yeah, the ‘understanding’ part is easy to find a reason and justification for. Fear will do a lot to someone, even if they don’t want to acknowledge that they CAN be afraid.” He sighed. “Still... If they were doing this for the sake of the short term solution... Wouldn’t that mean that it’d be entirely possible that... my memories, the things that make me an individual, someone other than just simply Revan, might... slip away, replaced by what came from Revan, and... and it’d be like I never existed, because... I’m just... some cipher that the Council created to serve their purpose.”

“You’re not.” Carth reached out, cupping Dartak’s face in his hands. “You are a person. You’re an individual, shaped by your experiences. Whatever might be a part of Revan in your mind, it’s the past. You are a separate person.” He pressed a gentle kiss to Dartak’s forehead. “I love you. I love the man you are. If you ever start questioning yourself, come back to that, all right? That I love you. If you can’t be sure of who you are, be sure of that.”

Dartak let himself melt into Carth’s touch. For all his fears of the possibilities, of what might happen... He was loved. That was something to hold tight to. Maybe it’d even be enough to hold back any well of memories that threatened to overwhelm him.

Because Revan wasn’t in love with Carth. Carth didn’t love Revan. But Dartak and Carth were in love. 

If Revan’s memories ever came back, he had to hold on to that. Because he if he lost that... That would truly be when he lost himself.

With a heavy breath, Dartak wrapped his arms around Carth, pulling him tight. They rolled and shifted until they rested on their sides.

“I don’t want to lose myself, Carth. If those memories ever come back... I’m scared I’ll forget the man I am now, become... him again.”

“That won’t happen,” Carth said, and there was a certainty in his voice that made Dartak believe him. “Even if those memories return... You’re not that man. You’ve gone through things, things that he never did. They’ve shaped you, made you into a different person than he was. Revan, whoever he was, why he did the things he did... All of that isn’t you. You’re a separate person from Revan, no matter what you might remember. The choices you’ve made since then... They aren’t his. They’re yours. And they’ve defined who you are.”

The kernel of doubt still sat in the back of Dartak’s mind – he might never be sure that Revan couldn’t come back through some unpleasant quirk of whatever the Council had done to rebuild him after Malak’s attack, the fear of something making him the same person who’d turned on the Republic and waged war might always remain – but... Carth’s words were soothing. There was even the possibility that he was right.

Dartak sighed, nuzzling against Carth in contentment. “Maybe I should talk to Bastila, or Jolee, see if they might know something that I can or should do to... help calm my mind.” 

“Maybe.” Carth might be close to Jedi, but after everything... Dartak couldn’t blame him for any skepticism about Jedi help. It wasn’t like he was all that much more enthusiastic about the idea either, but those were the people most likely to do something to help stamp out what remained of that lingering fear.

“You’re right, though,” Dartak said. “I am a different man than Revan. Whoever he was... That’s not me. I may remember more of him over time, but... I’ve made my choices. I’m Dartak. Not Revan. Revan died on that ship, and I may carry something of him... But I’m a separate man.” He gently leaned in for a kiss with Carth, letting out a sigh of contentment at the gentle press of their lips. 

“You’re also the man I love,” Carth said.

“That’s definitely one thing I have going for me over Revan...”

**Author's Note:**

> Sure, the game has a happy ending and all, but Force, there's probably a lot of emotional trauma that Revan (or whatever name the player gives them) has to unpack after all that.
> 
> And seriously Vandar, what the fuck, you're calling them "Revan" in front of a crowd at a celebration about the end of a war that was started by Revan prior to you mind-wiping them? 
> 
> Have I mentioned that I have a lot of issues with the Jedi Council in general?


End file.
